Moral Confusion

Bush, not unexpectedly, vetoed the stem cell bill Wednesday. His explanation: "The Congress has sent me legislation that would compel American taxpayers, for the first time in our history, to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos."

You might also remember that Bush spent the summer of 2001 in a long, anguished quest for moral clarity before imposing the limits on research that this bill tried to overturn. Clearly, Bush wants people to think that he is truly committed to the moral principles that have driven his actions on this issue.

But just as clearly, he isn't. The stem cell bill would merely have permitted stem cell research using the excess embryos resulting from certain fertility treatments, embryos that are destined to be destroyed anyway. By vetoing the bill, not a single embryo will be saved. And when it comes to lobbying for those policies that would prevent embryos from being destroyed, the President and most of the right wing are silent. There are no calls to ban these fertility treatments that produce these excess embryos. Indeed, the "Human Embryo Destruction Ban" promoted by the FRC explicitly excludes fertility treatments from its scope.

And then we are faced with the fact that 50% of conceptions end in spontaneous abortion. You might expect insistent calls from those who believe that life begins at conception to devote substantial resources to save these millions who die each year. But instead, nothing.

If you want to believe that life begins at conception, that's fine with me. If that belief compels you take certain moral stands, all good. But if you want your convictions to be taken seriously, you have to be consistent, even when compelled to adopt positions that might be exceedingly unpopular, such as banning certain fertility treatments.

And Bush is neither consistent nor serious. While playing Solomon, he actually did split the stem cell baby in two back in 2001, and he's been doing contortions ever since to justify that awful bit of ethical and scientific policy. That most of the right does no better speaks volumes about their willingness to look the other way when their "culture of life" proves inconvenient.